Jordan Ayan, CEO of SubscriberMail, one of the country's leading email marketing service providers shares thoughts on marketing using technology, email marketing and whatever else catches his fancy.

February 2008

February 28, 2008

A few years ago, TED launched the TED prize. Three talented individuals are selected each year to receive the prize which consists of $100,000 in cash PLUS (and this is the really valuable part) one wish. The concept is that the TED community will rally around the wish and help make it come true.

This year's three winners are

The first winner is David Eggers. He saw a need to He developed a program to get writers to help tutor kids in troubled school areas. The tutoring center behind a Pirate Supply store in California, and a SuperHero supply store in Brooklyn and a Space Travel Supply Company in Seattle, and a Spy Supply store in Chicago. The brilliance of this project is that they create a wonderful environment where kids want to go, and once they get in there, they get one-on-one attention to help them with their writing. Dave's wish is to get 1000 creative individuals working with students in different ways. The web site onceuponaschool.org will document different ways that you can get involved.

The second winner is Neil Turok, a theoretical physics professor from Cambridge who has put forward the concept of the Endless Universe. Neil is originally from Africa. He started an organization to help educate students in Africa and to help them get the high level of education they need there, aqs opposed to going abroad. The organization he developed is called the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS). His wish is to create a network of AIM"s centers across Africa designed to help achieve his educational objective. His dream is that the next Einstien will come from Africa.

The third winner is Karen Armstrong. She is one of the foremost students of world religions and traditions. Her wish is based on a beautiful premise. According to her, the underpinning of all three of the Abrahamic religions is The Golden Rule. As such, she wants to establish an organization with a charter of compassion that will bring together leaders of the Christian, Judaic and Muslim faiths to work together to build on the concepts of universal justice and respect that is core to all three religions.

I heard about a great website here at TED. If you want to look at data spread across the world, check outWorldmapper. This site spreads nearly 400 data elements across global maps but represents the data by changing the size of the countries on the map. The example here shows ownership of personal computers.

Pangea Day is one of the wishes that came out of the TED prize program. Two years ago, film maker Jehane Noujaim stated "I wish to bring the world together for one day a year through the power of film." On May 10th, 2008 that her wish will be granted. There is not much to say about this video promoting the event other than - watch.

The last presentation of the session was incredibly moving. Jill Bolte Taylor is a brain researcher who suffered a stroke. She started the talk with perhaps the best audience attention-getter I have ever seen. She brought a human brain with her, and showed the audience the different parts in graphic detail.

Her story however was about the details she gathered as she experienced the stroke. She was able to make sense of what was happening to her, as her functions shut down, and looked at the experience from her perspective as a researcher. Her understanding was profound and beautiful. She shared that as a researcher she understood what was happening to the left hand side of her brain (what she called the serial processor) , and how her right brain (parallel processor)was taking over, and she was able to see “the we inside of me.” She described the state as Nirvana-like, as all of the components of her brain that create stress (recollection of the past, anticipation of the future) shut off.

Her point was that we can choose the consciousness of the two hemisphere’s, and that if we take the time to spend more time in the peace of our right brain, that perhaps there will be more peace. Her presentation was one of the most moving I have ever seen.

It is really difficult to blog from here because my brain is filling, and tracking with all of the great ideas, and then trying to write about them is becoming increasingly difficult. If you would like more depth on any of the talks here, make sure you visit the play-by-play blogs that are so well assembled by Bruno Giussani on both his LunchoverIP site, as well as on the TED.com blog and Ethan Zuckerman on his My Heart’s In Accra blog.

My plan is to provide tidbits of information and knowledge that I pick up.

I never cease to be amazed when some of the speakers take to the stage to present. Today, we had an artist present to us about Leonardo Da Vinci. Dutch artist Sigfried Woldhek pointed out that there has never been any agreement on what Leonardo Da Vinci looked like. So this artist, who knows quite a bit about faces as a result of the number of portraits he has created did scientific analysis to figure it out. He presented his findings here, and after analyzing all of DaVinci's work and came to the conclusion that there are three self-portraits that DaVinci had done in his lifetime. Based on his work, here are DaVinci's self portraits.

February 27, 2008

Earlier this month, Robert Scoble posted on his blog that Microsoft Researchers (his former employer) had shared a new invention with him that “made me cry.” However, he could not tell his readers about it. At TED, today, Curtis Wong and Jonathan Fay, two Microsoft Researchers announced the World Wide Telescope.

This new tool takes the best images from all of the world’s best telescopes and weaves them together seamlessly to create a dynamic image of the Universe. It will change forever the human perspective of what is around us, and is amazing in terms of what it does, and the quality of the images it provide.

It can best be described as Google Earth for the Universe, however words can not do justice to this, you will just have to see it.

TED University started the day off right. I participated in a class onthe digital entertainment world sponsored by Dell. All of the classparticipants left with a new Dell Red computer and a set of wireless speakers from Creative Labs.

Discussion revolved around how large the digital space is. I found it interesting that 6 hours of video I'd being added to YouTube everysingle minute. Currently the web consists of 3 million times moreinformation than on all the books ever written (161 exabytes to be exact) .

The discussion was excellent, but I ended up sitting next to the classclown. In most situations this would gave been a major distraction,but in this case, the class clown was none other than actor RobinWilliams. He turned a great discussion into one that was interestingand very funny.

There will be quite a few Bloggers here at TED giving a variety of perspectives. Here is a list of some of them.

Two TEDsters are well known for their play-by-play live blogs about what is happening on stage. Ethan Zuckerman and Bruno Glusanni are thr two Bloggers to turn to if you want live coverage of TED talks.

As usual, this year’s TED bag was filled with a variety of great, useful and unique items. It is great to see the mix of organizations that support TED with products. Here’s a summary of some of the items in the mix:

From company called 23andMe, a discount on a DNA home analysis kit that will provide you details about your ancestors and family - very cool. Some lucky TEDsters took the "spit test" before coming to Monterey and will see their results here for the first time.

The folks at Microsoft (perhaps jealous that we all received IPods last year) provided TED inscribed Zune players, filled with TED talks on video and music from TED musicians (as this seems to be a very Applecentric crowd, this is a bold move).

Syndication

Books I'm reading

Brian Selznick: The Invention of Hugo CabretThis is an absolutely gorgeous, stunning, book. The illustrations are some of the best I have ever seen in any book, and the author marries the story with the images in a very creative and unusual way. This was a TED book club selection. (*****)